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Monday, March 04, 2013

Now available: "Evangelical Catholicism" by George Weigel

The Catholic Church is on the threshold of a bold new era in its
two-thousand year history. As the curtain comes down on the Church
defined by the 16th-century Counter-Reformation, the curtain is rising
on the Evangelical Catholicism of the third millennium: a way of being
Catholic that comes from over a century of Catholic reform; a
mission-centered renewal honed by the Second Vatican Council and given
compelling expression by Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

The Gospel-centered Evangelical Catholicism of the future will send all
the people of the Church into mission territory every day-a territory
increasingly defined in the West by spiritual boredom and aggressive
secularism. Confronting both these cultural challenges and the shadows
cast by recent Catholic history, Evangelical Catholicism
unapologetically proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the truth of
the world. It also molds disciples who witness to faith, hope, and love
by the quality of their lives and the nobility of their aspirations.
Thus the Catholicism of the 21st-century and beyond will be a
culture-forming counterculture, offering all men and women of good will a
deeply humane alternative to the soul-stifling self-absorption of
postmodernity.

Drawing on thirty years of experience throughout the Catholic world,
from its humblest parishes to its highest levels of authority, George
Weigel proposes a deepening of faith-based and mission-driven Catholic
reform that touches every facet of Catholic life-from the episcopate and
the papacy to the priesthood and the consecrated life; from the renewal
of the lay vocation in the world to the redefinition of the Church's
engagement with public life; from the liturgy to the Church's
intellectual life. Lay Catholics and clergy alike should welcome the
challenge of this unique moment in the Church's history, Weigel urges.
Mediocrity is not an option, and all Catholics, no matter what their
station in life, are called to live the evangelical vocation into which
they were baptized: without compromise, but with the joy, courage, and
confidence that comes from living this side of the Resurrection.

Comments

George Weigel's new book is excellent. I have read many of his book's and think it is the most lucidly written of them. I am a Weigelian from way back. He makes a very intriguing comment in the Acknowledgements section, dated June 29, 2012: "I was also able to previw some the book's arguments in lectures at ...the offices of the Episcopal Conference of Argentina in Buenos Aries." Hmmm.